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TV Skateboards Promo Video (1992)

TV Skateboards was a short lived company started by Ed Templeton and myself in January of 1992.

Filmed over the late Spring and Summer of 1992 by Jeremy Traub, this edit was never meant for public consumption. Ed and I had no real plans at that time to use contest or demo footage in any full-length video that we would have produced, but we were glad that Jeremy had been at these different events, documented them and sent us this edit. The rest of the TV footage filmed during those days has still yet to see the light of day, so for now, this footage remains the only real video document of TV Skateboards.

The opening footage is from the Bricktown Skatepark Contest held in early June of 1992 which I attended solo.

The Whitman, Massachusetts Demo was held on July 18 for a shop called Bike Barn and features TV Riders, Jerry Fowler and Jahmal Williams skating with Ed and I.

We were back in Massachusetts on August 6 for a session at Interskate 91 in Springfield, Mass and a demo the next day in Boston with Jahmal for Beacon Hill Skates.

That entire Summer was very difficult for me. We had a very intense tour schedule, with a demo almost every day throughout Canada and the USA. I was very ill the entire time. Everything came to a head on August 5th, I collapsed outside of a restaurant in Newburgh, NY and should have checked into a hospital right then and there, but instead I wanted to fulfill my obligations and held it together and skated at Interskate 91 on August 6 and the Beacon Hill demo on August 7. On August 8, I flew back to California and checked into Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach for an extended stay. I had unknowingly been bleeding internally for weeks from a bleeding ulcer and I had nearly bled to death. I underwent an emergency blood transfusion and spent 10 days in the hospital recuperating.

Later that winter my daughter Emily was born, and the stress of being in business with a friend, and going from one crummy financial backer to another while eking out a very meager existence in a tumultuous skateboard industry proved to be too much for Ed and I. TV Skateboards would never realize it’s full potential, Within a year, Ed would go on to start Toy Machine and I would find myself for the most part retired from professional skateboarding and working for Powell Skateboards.